An exhaust device serves primarily the purpose of removing an exhaust gas produced by an internal combustion engine. For this, the exhaust device has an exhaust line, through which the exhaust gas flows. The exhaust device may also be used for acoustic purposes. Thus, exhaust devices often have at least one muffler (also known as a silencer), which is arranged in the exhaust line in order to manipulate and especially filter certain, predetermined ranges of the sound in the exhaust device or of the sound generated by the exhaust device. The exhaust device can usually be connected to the internal combustion engine, especially by means of one or more exhaust manifolds, upstream of the muffler. In a so-called double-flow exhaust device, the exhaust line has, moreover, two exhaust lines, at least in a rear section, which are usually arranged downstream of the muffler. To produce certain acoustic effects, for example, noises matching the particular engine speed or load of the internal combustion engine, acoustic actuators may, furthermore, be provided, wherein the particular exhaust line may have at least one such actuator, which is connected to this exhaust line in a sound-transmitting manner. Such an actuator is especially an electromagnetic sound generator, which forms a loudspeaker together with a membrane, wherein the sound generated by the loudspeaker can be transmitted to the particular exhaust line or to the exhaust gas. The interaction of the sound generated by one exhaust line with the sound generated by the other exhaust line, especially in the rear section, is used to achieve such acoustic effects.
The drawback of this is that the exhaust lines, especially those in the rear section, usually have the same design. In addition, the actuators of the rear exhaust lines usually generate an identical sound signal. This may lead to undesired and unfavorable noises, especially in the remote area, i.e., outside the exhaust device, in case of superposition of the sound waves generated by the exhaust lines. The variety of the noises that can be generated is thus also limited.